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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with rice and barley flour, fat, sugar, syrup, eggs, milk, spices, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the fat, sugar, and egg yolks together.

  2. Add the syrup and mix well.

  3. Alternately add the liquid and the sifted dry ingredients.

  4. Incorporate the flavoring and melted chocolate mixed with a small portion of the syrup.

  5. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. After 20 minutes, increase the temperature to 400°F (200°C).

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the batter, and beaten whites add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise and become tender.
Rice flour
Provides the main structure of the cake along with the barley flour.
Barley flour
Adds structure and body to the crumb alongside the rice flour.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake stay soft and browned.
Chocolate
Adds flavor and color to the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously or too long deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More chocolate cake recipes

Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

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